Repetition

Product Description<br/><br/><br/><br/>Set in 1960, this novel tells of Filib Kobal's journey from his home in Carinthia to Slovenia on the trail of his missing brother, Gregor. He is armed only with two of Gregor's books: a copy book from agricultural school, and a Slovenian - German dictionary, in which Gregor has marked certain words. The resulting investigation of the laws of language and naming becomes a transformative investigation of himself and the world around him.<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/>From Publishers Weekly<br/><br/><br/>"Handke's eminence, displayed in a substantial oeuvre of plays, novels and poems, is reaffirmed brilliantly by his latest work," praised PW . In 1960, an alienated, 20-year-old, nascent Austrian writer of Slovenian descent, embarks on a quest to the land of his forebears.<br/>Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.<br/><br/><br/>From Library Journal<br/><br/><br/>$18.95. f Growing through time and passing through space engross young Austrian Filip Kobal. Setting out from Austria in summer 1960, Filip crosses into Yugoslavia, following the path of his dead brother, Gregor. As companions he takes two books: his brother's old notebook and a Slovenian-German dictionary. Through the notebook he regains contact with Gregor by recapturing events from his truncated life. The dictionary explodes language into a palpable present and points Filip toward his true calling as a writer. This novel is not among Handke's best. Composed of "word sequences," it is intended "to be both consistent and imaginative," but while the latter is true, the former, woefully, is not. Amidst the swirling phrases one is apt to ask, "Just what is the point?" The answer, like this novel, is not satisfying. Paul E. Hutchison, Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park<br/>Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.<br/><br/><br/>Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.<br/><br/><br/><br/>Repetition<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/>One<br/><br/><br/>THE BLIND WINDOW<br/><br/><br/>A QUARTER OF A CENTURY, or a day, has passed since I arrived in Jesenice on the trail of my missing brother. I was not yet twenty and I had just taken my final school examination. I ought to have felt free, for after weeks of study the summer months lay open before me. But I had set out with mixed feelings, what with my old father, my ailing mother, and my confused sister at home in Rinkenberg. Besides, after being released from the seminary, I had got used, during the past year, to my class in the state school in Klagenfurt, where girls were in the majority, and now I suddenly found myself alone. While my classmates piled into the bus together and set out for Greece, I played the loner who preferred to go to Yugoslavia by himself. (The truth was that I simply didn't have the money for the group trip.) Another reason for my unease was that I had never been outside of Austria and knew very little Slovene, though it was hardly a foreign language for an inhabitant of a village in southern Carinthia.<br/><br/><br/>After a glance at my newly issued Austrian passport, the border guard in Jesenice spoke to me in his language. When I failed to understand, he told me in German that Kobal was a Slavic name, that the word meant the span between parted legs, a "step," and consequently a person standing with legs outspread, so that my name would have been better suited to him,the border guard. The elderly official beside him, in civilian clothes, white-haired, with the round, rimless glasses of a scholar, explained with a smile that the related verb meant "to climb" or "to ride"; thus, my given name, Filip, "lover of horses," fitted in with Kobal, and he felt sure I would someday do honor to my full name. (Since then, I have often found the civil servants of this so-called progressive country, which was once part of an empire, surprisingly well educated.) Suddenly he grew grave, came a step closer, and looked me solemnly in the eye. I should know, he said, that two and a half centuries ago there had been a Slovene hero named Kobal. In the year 1713 Gregor Kobal, from near Tolmin on the headwaters of the river which